Veenhuis hoped to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science

FROM VEENHUIS PAGE 1

“Boiled down, Luke knew it was harmless and silly,” Braun said. Veenhuis sometimes seemed to attract humor and irony like a magnet, according to his high school and college friend Roman Boparai.

“If something ironic were to happen, obviously it would happen to Luke,” Boparai said. “He was just always in the right place at the right time.”

Boparai said that one time, Veenhuis became hypnotized during an event with a high school hypnotist. But Veenhuis was actually in the crowd, not on stage with the other volunteers for the session, he added.

ISABELLE HAN/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

“Back in 2014, the contract was set up with paid laundry,” Henault wrote. “I expect a discussion to happen regarding free laundry when this contract is complete.”

For now, Henault wrote, the dollars students pay for laundry are used to maintain the machines.

“The revenue from the washerdryer commission goes toward the expense of running the machines — electricity, water and network upkeep in particular,” Henault wrote. “Anything above those expenses goes toward the building expense,” she wrote, before listing “taxes, insurance, [and] maintenance.” College spokesperson Diana Lawrence wrote in an email to The Dartmouth that CSC ServiceWorks has a technician on campus every other day, if not every day.

“Unfortunately, because of the age of the machines, they do break down occasionally,” Lawrence wrote. “Some are down for extended periods of time because CSC cannot find parts. They have begun replacing machines and have replaced two to date.”

But as complaints continue to pile up, the issue has begun to take on greater significance among Student Government, according to East Wheelock senator Jack Wisdom ’26.

“A lot of members of the board of trustees have agreed that they want to try and move to something different in the future, maybe make it free,” Wisdom said.

In the meantime, Henault told students to reach out if a machine is in need of repair.

“There is a phone number on the CSC posters in laundry rooms,” Henault wrote. “I would recommend calling residential operations (6461203) or emailing residential. operations@dartmouth.edu with work orders, though. We can make sure the order is submitted and follow up if necessary.”

Jacob Strier ’23 contributed to reporting.

“Luke got hypnotized in the crowd and it was the funniest thing in the world,” Boparai said. “That explains his enigma: Nobody was surprised that he got hypnotized in the crowd.”

Veenhuis’ mother said that after her son’s passing she became more aware of his antics.

“I knew there were a lot of stories out there, and parents are always the last to know,” she joked. “He was just a really great kid.”

While in junior college, Veenhuis took a trip to Egypt with fellow students for an ancient history class, according to his mother. She said this image represents his sense of humor. Photo courtesy of Sue Veenhuis.

When their paths crossed again at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Boparai experienced a whole new Veenhuis, whom he described as the “workaholic Luke.” The two would sit together in Nguyen’s research lab spending late nights trying to navigate problems.

“Our discussions would almost get philosophical to a point and just became conjecture,” Boparai said. “We would go on a long tangent just talking about random stuff. I remember Luke was always pressured to want to succeed and be the best computer science research student that he could be.”

In the research group, both Nguyen and his teammates described Veenhuis as a critical team player, always willing to lend a helping hand to others. His Thayer colleague Gregory Hyde, a Ph.D. student in professor Santos’s lab — who also attended the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater with Veenhuis — said that Veenhuis pulled him out of his shell during their college years. In between the hard work, Hyde recalled warm memories of late nights in Nguyen’s lab fueled by energy drinks and games of Runescape, as well as fun nights out on the town.

“We were pretty competitive in academia and were constantly trying to one-up each other in a beneficial sense; it made us both better,” Hyde said. “He was instrumental for me being here [at Dartmouth].”

At Dartmouth, Hyde said that Veenhuis applied his “architectural mind” to data science in the lab, working on projects to help clinical researchers parse through biomedical data.

“Luke wore two hats, one as a software engineer, architecting out our [application programming interface] service, and another as a researcher, helping us organize and model our data,” Hyde wrote in a follow-up email. “Luke always had a mind for architecting out information systems.”

Sue Veenhuis said that she thinks her son would have gone on to pursue a doctorate and become a professor, guiding other students in computer science. She added that her family is in the process of organizing a scholarship in Veenhuis’s name at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater to help other students gain degrees in computer science.

Boparai said that Veenhuis left a positive impact on everyone around him during his life with his deep sense of compassion.

“You could tell that a lot of people cared about him because he was one of those guys that was just friends with hundreds of people,” he said. “I never met someone who did not like Luke. He just got along with everybody really well.”